Daughters Beyond Command

By Véronique Olmi

An absorbing bildungsroman that tells the story of three sisters during a decade of radical societal transformation

Three sisters were born into a modest Catholic family in Aix-en-Provence. Sabine, the eldest, dreams of an artist’s life in Paris; Hélène, the middle girl, grows up divided between the bourgeois environment of Neuilly-sur-Seine and the simple life led by her parents; Mariette, the youngest, learns the secrets and silences of a dazzling and crazy world. 

In 1970, French society is changing. Women have emancipated themselves whilst men have lost their bearings, and the three sisters, each in their own way, find ways to live a life of their own—a strong life, far from the morality, education, and the religion of their childhood. 

This family chronicle, which takes us from the May 1968 protests to the 1981 elections, is as much a tender and tragic stroll through the 20th century as it is the chronicle of an era, where consciousnesses are awakening to the upheaval of the world, and heralding the chaos to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Release date: Jan 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9781609457914

Véronique Olmi

Véronique Olmi is an actor, playwright, and stage director, who has written several novels including the critically acclaimed Bords de mer and Cet été-là, for which she received the Prix des maisons de la presse in 2011. She has also published two plays Une séparation and Un autre que moi.

Book preview

I

ALL TOGETHER THEY WERE SOMEONE

Hélène was arriving from another world. She was on her way home, with her suitcase and her new red slicker, with its matching rain hat; she was different, she stood out. She liked wearing the slicker, the scrunchy sound the fabric made when she sat down, the smell of it, slightly chemical and sour, its bright red color. It protected her from the rain when she was living at her uncle’s in Neuilly, and from the mistral wind when she went home to her father’s in Aix-en-Provence. It was 1970, end of summer, she’d been going back and forth now for eight years, between luxury in Neuilly and simplicity in Aix, and she didn’t question the situation, she just lived with it. She adapted. She was eleven years old.

During the week, the arrivals hall at Marignane airport was deserted. Her father came to get her, and this man who had never been on a plane waited apprehensively, then saw her from a distance in her red slicker, often the only child in the sudden flow of adults, most of them businessmen. Around her neck was a sign with her name on it, Hélène Malivieri, but unlike when she was younger, she no longer had to hold hands with one of the stewardesses, who all looked like Françoise Dorléac and went up to her father with their look of emancipation and piquant sensuality. He would show them his ID, which he’d already gotten out, and kiss his daughter with restraint. He longed to take her in his arms. He didn’t. She was returning from a world he felt excluded from, and in this arrivals hall, this vast space with its luxury advertising depicting enraptured couples touting perfumes and countries he had no interest in, he would not allow himself any displays of tenderness. He was anxious. Slightly self-conscious. His daughter, in this place conceived for affluent people—would they really hand her over to him personally, to him and no one else? He’d been offended the one time when the stewardess didn’t ask him for his papers, his ID card proving he was her father.

You would let my daughter go off with a complete stranger?

But Monsieur, she threw her arms around you!

So?

His aggressive stance toward this stewardess capable of entrusting his daughter to a stranger was one of the rare times Hélène saw her father lose his temper with a woman, but it was not that surprising he’d betrayed his anxiety to this stewardess, for the moment she let go of Hélène’s hand, she abruptly erased weeks of separation. The two men Hélène lived with in turns had nothing in common other than the fact they had each married a Richert daughter. Bruno, Hélène’s father, was a teacher in a private school, the youngest in a family of two girls and five boys, who, like him, set aside part of their salary every month to absorb the enormous debts of their father, François Malivieri; after the war he’d invented and marketed folding trailers and, unfortunately, they did not unfold. David, Hélène’s uncle, had started importing a major camera brand from Japan, and was the son of the Swiss banker Franz Tavel. He was a man of means, with a brilliant career. The father of two boys, he loved Hélène like a daughter, the one he’d never had, and ever since she’d turned three and could travel unaccompanied, he’d been asking her to come and stay during school vacations and the three summer months, sometimes more, when he decided he missed her too much and made her skip the last days of school, which are pointless anyway. Every month, he sent Bruno a check, financial assistance that Bruno accepted with painful humility, and part of which he made over to his bankrupt father.

In the Simca 1000 taking them from the airport, Bruno didn’t ask Hélène how things had gone there. She had just got back from her rich relatives; he lived in La Petite Chartreuse, at the edge of the city center, and while the family didn’t want for anything, it did seem like there was a lot that they made do without. Life in their apartment was simple, almost austere: the walls bare of paintings smelled of wallpaper glue, and there was so little furniture that their voices echoed, as if the family had just moved in or were getting ready to leave again.

On the way home, with her red hat on her lap, Hélène looked through the window at these landscapes she had missed—the raw pine forests under the all-consuming blue of the sky; she let this landscape paper over the one she had just left. She would find her place again among her siblings, between Sabine the eldest and Mariette the youngest: her place in the middle, which supported her, as if she were lying between her two sisters in a narrow bed, protected by their closeness.

Once Hélène was home, Sabine opened her suitcase. No sooner had she carried it to their room than her sister was inspecting and touching everything Hélène had brought back: new clothes that no one had worn before her, and which had been picked out and purchased to suit her, and not to be worn by one younger sister after the other, for years. You couldn’t see the hems on the dresses; they hadn’t been altered over time. The sleeves were neither too short nor hastily rolled up, and, as she unfolded the new garments, Sabine could understand the expression, it fits perfectly. Neatly folded, the collars buttoned and the sleeves folded behind, with the little cuffs laid flat, they were like obedient little animals waiting to be let out into the great outdoors.

Gosh, this is pretty . . . can you wear it every day?

Well, sure.

You wear it to town?

To town?

I mean, in Paris.

Yes. In Paris, in Neuilly, in Normandy, too.

You go horseback riding in these clothes?

I go horseback riding in trousers, she didn’t buy me any new trousers.

Can I try this dress on?

Sabine put on the dress, it was too small for her. She turned this way and that, taking tiny steps as she looked at herself in the mirror on the wardrobe, smiling as if the dress fit perfectly, appreciating the look of the new fabric, with colors as pure as a summer morning. At fourteen, she had a solid body, generous curves, and a face that had too much character for her liking. She admired Audrey Hepburn’s slim figure, her lively, defiant personality. She envied girls who seemed to have a natural style, girls who looked good in anything, not just in their clothing, but in their lives as well, a life they had chosen and could wear gracefully. Hélène watched Sabine, afraid the seams might burst, but she didn’t say anything. She had missed her so much that at the Galeries Lafayette her eyes had filled with tears when she saw two sisters amusing themselves trying on a pair of gloves. Hearing them laugh made her sad, and her solitude gave her a confused feeling of insignificance. Her aunt Michelle often took her to the big department stores—endless days spent as if they were in a giant jewelry box overflowing with light, escalators, and artificial fragrances. Standing at their counters, the saleswomen resembled the mannequins in the shop windows, their eyes heavily made up, their expressions frozen in radiant politeness. Once, Hélène saw one of those mannequins on the floor, with its naked body severed into pieces, and she wondered if the saleswomen, too, if they fell over, would maintain their delighted, amiable expressions.

When Sabine lay down on her bed, the dress split under the arms.

While you were away, Mariette was sick again, Maman was crying all the time.

Do you think it’s serious?

Mariette or Maman?

The dress doesn’t fit you . . .

Of course it doesn’t. Do you think I can come with you one day?

Come where?

Paris.

I’d like that. Is she still getting sick at night?

Yes, it’s always when Maman and Papa are asleep, it’s a good thing she’s in their room, Maman hears her right away. Mariette starts coughing and she can’t breathe, it scares the hell out of me, but I don’t dare go and see.

I’m here now.

Yes, you’re here. We’ll be going back to school soon.

There were the vacation days with the Tavels, and the school days with the Malivieris. One place for leisure—and boredom, too—the room without her sister, the days in the department stores, the rule never to speak at the dinner table, and all those adults, her uncle, her aunt, their friends, and their sons, two teenagers who lived their lives elsewhere; and even if the dresses did fit her, the world around Hélène was uncertain. And so, she went out, to the neighbors’, even though she didn’t like them very much; she made friends, mostly ephemeral ones, childhood crushes. When she was younger, she’d spent a lot of time with Dolorès, who’d been the Tavels’ maid at the time, and whose children had stayed behind in Spain. Dolorès wore black, and in her windowless room she taught Hélène how to knit. She also took her along to do the shopping at the end of the day, a quick trip to the grocer, the baker, and she held Hélène’s hand with unquestionable authority. Dolorès had gone away, and Hélène was older, no longer entrusted to the servants. From the very beginning she’d had a trusted friend at the Tavels’ who asked for nothing and understood everything. Caprice was a shorthaired dachshund who worshiped Hélène with unstinting devotion. You only had to say Hélène’s name for him to begin whimpering; a panicked joy set him to trembling and whining. Hélène loved it when they told her how much he’d missed her, the constancy of his attachment to her. She often spoke to him in his dog language, lifting his ears and barking gently, modulating each sound so he would understand what she meant, and it seemed to her that the less he understood, the more attentive he became. Her barking was no good and eventually she stopped it altogether, and told him in human language that she was feeling down, fed up being stuck here with all these adults; and her spirits fell even more when she got a letter from her family, who’d gone away on vacation, camping in Ramatuelle, and they all seemed to make their letters as big as possible to fill an entire page with formulaic messages and cheer she didn’t share. She left Caprice behind as soon as vacation was over. They said goodbye several days before her departure. And they spent their lives leaving each other.

The joy she felt being back with her family was somewhat forced; she was always afraid, on seeing them again, that she wouldn’t be in step anymore. She had to adapt quickly and without any apparent effort, as if she’d simply gone downstairs to play outside and had come straight back. She couldn’t see the connection between her aunt and her mother, couldn’t situate them in the same family with the same name, these two women who were so diametrically opposed. Michelle, the eldest of the seven children, had been allowed to pursue her studies, and she’d obtained a librarian’s diploma. (As for the eldest boy, he’d gone to medical school.) But once they’d produced a daughter and, above all, a son, their parents figured they’d done their bit, they were now properly represented, and the children who came afterwards grew up as best they could, in the shadows, learning to fend for themselves. Agnès was the youngest, she didn’t go to university, and at eighteen she married a man whose profession as a teacher lowered the glorious status of head of the family to that of a boy without ambition. Michelle, on marrying David Tavel, had to learn the codes of the French bourgeoisie: the couple said vous to each other, just as the sons said vous to their parents. They were served at dinner, they sat up straight, treated the maid politely, even though they teased her and thought she lacked a sense of humor when she took it badly. At Bruno and Agnès’s house, if they weren’t having guests, they ate in the kitchen—Formica furniture, plastic tablecloth, dishes washed by hand, taking turns. Most of the time, Agnès didn’t join them at the table but remained standing, she said it was more practical that way and she enjoyed watching them eat what she’d made for them. The shortage of money made their bonds fragile, as if everything might disappear from one day to the next, and by dint of constantly doing without and being careful, the parents were like two children fidgeting at the side of the road and never finding a moment to cross. We couldn’t get far. As for Hélène, she already had a foot in the door to elsewhere, and when her mother introduced her children, she would smile and say as naturally as could be, This is Sabine, my eldest, Mariette, the youngest, and this is the Tavel girl. And the reply would be, Oh, yes, the Parisienne!

The evening Hélène arrived, dinner always seemed strange to her; she found her place at the table. It was a bit of a squeeze in the kitchen, but at last the entire family was together again, and Bruno gazed at his daughters with touching satisfaction.

I want to go with Hélène to Paris next time, said Sabine.

Agnès was serving the artichokes and her gaze lingered above the pressure cooker, the steam burning her arm. She swore under her breath. Bruno said, Why?

She gets bored by herself. Don’t you get bored, Hélène?

Tavel didn’t invite you.

Agnès said it with a touch of spite, unusual for her. She was a kind mother, who invested all her energy in running her family, and it was as if she’d taken on the job to prove to someone how competent she was.

I’ve been dreaming of going to Paris, Maman, you know that!

"What’s so interesting about Paris? Don’t you get enough watching At the Theater this Evening?"

No, watching At the Theater this Evening was not enough, even if it had also nurtured her interest in Paris. On the black and white screen, Sabine had watched plays by Molière and André Roussin with equal fascination, more than twenty a year, evenings when the entire family showed up on time and spoke quietly. Her longing for Paris, where she’d been a few times for family gatherings, was a longing for a different life, an opportunity for transformation, exactly what kind she didn’t know, but it seemed possible that something extraordinary could happen there, and that she might prove capable of experiencing it.

Not at All Saints’, the break at All Saints’ is too short. And Christmas, after all . . . Maybe Easter, we’ll see . . . Later on, we’ll see . . .

Go and live in Paris. Agnès could see why. She thought about everything she’d dreamed of studying and hadn’t studied, about the countries she’d dreamed of visiting and had never been to, simply because a girl doesn’t risk her virginity in the dangerous world of men, and the youngest girl in a Catholic family has to find herself a nice husband, and have nice children with him, and happiness will come all by itself. She never took her final exams, and she’d only ever dreamed of becoming. Ballerina. Interpreter. Pediatrician.

I’ll ask Michelle.

She said it without looking at Bruno, her gaze focused on the sink, where she was beginning to wash the pans. He lit a cigarette and said to Sabine, If you go to Paris with Hélène, it’d give me a chance to re-paper your room.

Hélène knew she’d be going back to Paris at All Saints’, for the too-short break, and while she spent Christmas Eve with her parents, she always left the following day, heading first to Marignane airport, then on to the dog waiting impatiently behind the car windows, to her presents at the foot of the tree, which she opened on her own since the party was over. But at Easter, maybe Sabine could come with her . . . would they travel together? Would she teach her the difference between a Boeing and a Caravelle? In Neuilly, would they take a bath in the huge tub Maria filled to the brim, while in La Petite Chartreuse they would be putting a trickle of water for three in the washtub they placed in the shower stall? She would show Sabine something incredible: when you lie down in a full bathtub, your legs float up all by themselves. She’d also warn her about a few things: if you don’t sit up straight at the table, Michelle will poke you in the spine with her fingernail; it doesn’t really hurt but it’s annoying. She’d also tell her not to put her cheese on her bread (Are you making a sandwich?). And she’d teach her how to peel a peach with a knife and fork, never to cut her lettuce, not to say horse riding but go horseback riding, not to say eat but to say lunch or dinner. But above all she would introduce her to Baloo, her Shetland mare that for some reason had a boy’s name and wasn’t able to foal but had one phantom pregnancy after another, and then she could ask Sabine if she knew what that meant.

Every night, Sabine dreamed of Paris. She couldn’t wait to go to bed to continue the exciting story she was telling herself, a story like a really dramatic soap opera, until eventually she fell asleep, still imagining. She was the narrator, and the sole protagonist, and what she invented for herself sometimes moved her to tears. She had encounters, survived danger, attracted and fascinated imaginary creatures—walk-on parts next to her intoxicating life. Everything took place in Paris and, most nights, in a theater. She had always wondered where the spectators at the Théâtre Marigny went after the final curtain, along with the invariably mentioned set designer Roger Harth and costume designer Donald Cardwell. You could see them get up and put on their coats amid an indecipherable hubbub. She wanted to follow them. To find out how they got home, what Paris was like at night. There were evenings when she didn’t follow them down the boulevards, or into the brasseries, some evenings she would spend auditioning on stage at the Théâtre Marigny, performing the inevitable scenes from bourgeois plays where everyone cheated on their spouse in a good-humored way, entering or leaving the stage solely in order to complicate the situation. She was chosen. She performed in Paris then went on tour with the company, it was thrilling, a little bit adventurous, a life that was different from any other, the life of an artist with moments of success, love affairs, hard-won battles. And why not? Anything could happen. She knew she wouldn’t always be in her room in La Petite Chartreuse, with Mariette’s night-time cough resounding through the wall, and when the neighbors banged with their broom handle, she absorbed the cruelty of the world and promised herself never to forget. Just as she would never forget her mother, holding her younger sister close for nights on end, standing by the hot water faucet in the bathroom, because the steam helped her daughter breathe, and, by morning, the boiler would be empty of hot water.

Sabine had just started the third year of collège, and she’d decided to give herself a head start, to think and act as if her adolescent years were already behind her. She had to break free from her family and from the collège; she had to prepare herself for the life that was waiting for her. She strove to be more confident, to observe the world and defend her own opinions, but she couldn’t find anyone to share them with. Her girlfriends only cared about their first period, going shopping at the Prisunic, talking about the Sunday night movie and the Thursday afternoon party. A life made up of inevitable worries, and secrets they did not know how to express, so they borrowed the expressions of others, decisive words that reassured them. Sometimes she bought a magazine or a newspaper, Le Nouvel Observateur or Le Monde, and read them timidly, overwhelmed by the thought that she was surely meant to read every page, something she never managed to do. She signed up at the local library and discovered worlds she didn’t always understand, but as her reading progressed, her life mingled with that of the protagonists and became more inspired: these were extraordinary lives, wings spread wide to beat against the wind, as if every one of them deserved to be praised.

The more she pictured herself elsewhere, later in life, the more she began to live in a multi-layered time, a sort of life with several dimensions, vanishing lines, and extensions. The cloister of the Collège des Prêcheurs, the gray stone stairway leading to the classrooms, the schoolyard with its disgusting toilets: she no longer saw them. Math classes with Mademoiselle Beyer, who fiddled with her chalk and said, You may think I’m harping, and in fact she was harping . . . but about what? Sabine didn’t understand a thing, it was confusing and pointless. Then there was the music teacher, Mademoiselle Chef, who terrified the younger students—that quivering sound emerging from their plastic flutes, followed by their crazed delight when the girls realized that Mademoiselle Chef was only a stupid woman at the mercy of their collective power. And what about the English teacher: the entire class would stand up, trumpeting in chorus Good morning, Mrs. Thomas! before sitting down, chairs squeaking, for an hour of resigned, droning repetition. These months and years spent among girls, without even a single professor or supervisor or any other element of the male sex, the girls in one school, the boys in another, like incompatible wildlife. And yet, since May ’68, the principal had stopped writing girls’ names on the blackboard in the supervisors’ room, the ones she would see on the weekend in Aix with a boy, girls who would immediately be tracked down in the courtyard thanks to the nametags on their uniforms. Some of them hid, others collapsed in tears. The ones who dared to confront opprobrium and curiosity were rare. Only recently had they been given the right to elect class delegates. And to hold their heads a bit higher. But their eyes lowered. The world was still narrow-minded, thick with the dusty film of ignorance. What was the point of it all? Where was joy? And above all, what space were they entitled to live in? Where to find wonder in their lives? The pupils began their first year in fear, looking for protection from an older sister; four years later, they left school astonished they had taken it all so seriously, astonished at how much they had suffered in that hostile, old-fashioned world.

Bruno was driving with the windows down, his left arm on the door, and the smell of mown grass mingled with the odors of the Simca, the dusty seat covers, and the Gauloise brune cigarette he was slowly smoking. He was on his way back from the Aiguilles wine co-op, where he bought his wine in boxes before bottling it himself, and he could still smell the odor of the cheap co-op wine, the wet floor, the cork and the straw, which the strong presence of the surrounding vineyards and pine trees failed to conceal. The sky was getting dark, insects were hurtling against the windshield, evening was rising like a thick mist, and suddenly he felt sad, as if he’d been hiding this sadness from himself and it suddenly came over him by surprise. So, he began to hum a rather stupid song, The Three Bells, his daughters liked it, but it felt strange singing without them, as if he were telling a story into the void. He wondered if he had the right to stop Sabine from going to Paris with Hélène. What was it that drew her there? The city itself, or the Tavels? He didn’t feel like re-papering their room, he was lousy when it came to putting up wallpaper, lousy at all sorts of home improvement jobs, something Agnès took as a personal affront. Her husband was not a handyman. No. He was not a handy husband. And he only produced daughters. There was something lacking in him, a virile element missing, as if it were impossible for him to assert himself. Three girls and no children, said his father, when he asked Bruno what would become of the Malivieri name after he was gone. A hypocritical jibe, because Bruno’s brothers had boys, they had children. His father forgot, or pretended to forget, that there was something else. Something Bruno banished from his memory the moment it surfaced.

He saw her from a distance. Gave a start, as if this harsh, unexpected image had landed on his windshield. He instinctively thought of his daughters, as he did whenever there was danger. He pulled the car over to the side, the secondary road was narrow and unlit. He switched on his hazard lights and ran toward the girl. She was on the ground, next to her bicycle, and conscious. She answered when he asked her name, she was called Rose, and she said her leg hurt and her shoulder too, she couldn’t move them anymore, and she burst into tears. He told her he was going to see if she was bleeding, she buried her head in his shoulder, she was cold, her teeth were chattering, biting the inside of her cheeks. Apparently, she wasn’t bleeding. Bruno knew you were supposed to place injured people in a recovery position, but he went on holding Rose close to him, like a baby, protecting her from the approaching chill of the night. He carried her over to the shoulder of the road while he put the bike in the trunk of the car. The child’s body was shaking convulsively, like a battered animal, and she vomited in the grass for a long time. The headlights of the Simca cast a glare on her, an insistent flashlight searching for something. Bruno could hear the traffic in the distance, the motors of the clanking trucks as they turned before the intersection and came no further this way, the secondary road was deserted and he felt abandoned in a dead world, a world made empty by the accident. He lifted the little girl up again and settled her on the back seat, saying comforting words to her, of the sort he would have said to his daughters, but he didn’t love this injured child, he was afraid of her, and he was in a hurry to entrust her to others. He drove slowly, talked to her to reassure himself, the hospital wasn’t far, they’d be there soon, he kept saying it, we’ll be there soon . . . 

When they got to the emergency room, he saw she had fallen asleep. In a panic he ran to reception, and everything went very quickly. Nurses rushed out with a gurney, and one of them handed the little girl’s bag to him. We’re taking your daughter to the operating room, and they disappeared behind the swinging doors, no one faulted him for having brought her, no one paid him any attention, but nevertheless he felt as if he had done something wrong, he was almost astonished they weren’t accusing him. In the bag, he found the name and telephone number of Rose’s mother, he got change at the reception and called her. Ten minutes later, Laurence arrived at the emergency room. She hadn’t even taken the time to put on her shoes, she was wearing slippers, her hair unkempt, her cardigan buttoned wrong over her dress, Bruno knew immediately that this was her, a mother looking for her child. She was waiting for a reassuring word, the confirmation that everything would be all right, he was embarrassed that she was giving him this power, all he had done was rescue a child lying on the ground. He smiled at her with a forced sense of calm, then looked away, avoiding conversation. He didn’t see how he could make her feel better, and he was trying to hide his own fear, his anger, too, when he thought of the bastard who’d knocked the little girl over and driven off. They waited in silence, seated to one side of the swinging doors that led into a world that told them NO ADMISSION; they were living through a confused, oppressive time, a time no one ever wants to live through, and yet it tells you that this is life. It is possible that you will not be spared.

Laurence pleaded with the girl at reception for some news, and not long afterwards, or maybe it was hours later, an intern came to reassure them. Rose was doing well, her leg was broken, they’d fitted her with pins and plaster, she would be in the recovery room soon. His words erased their worst fears. Laurence took her face in her hands: this good news was as powerful a shock as the news of the accident had been. Bruno felt the burden of it all suddenly fall away, and he was left with the slightly cowardly feeling that the benign nature of it all had done him a huge favor.

They went out to smoke a cigarette. Laurence was smiling through her tears, her fingers trembled, she was beautiful, a distraught mother whose tears illuminated her dark eyes. She is like a Madonna: Bruno allowed himself the thought, both accurate and upsetting; it was almost unreal to be sharing the intensity of that moment as complete strangers. Before long, Laurence said she had to make a phone call. He stayed alone in the keening night, the insistent song of crickets lending a poignant surface to the darkness; something was lying in wait, in this invisible world. He closed his eyes and held his face up to the cool, humid air, his back to the hospital. He slowly felt his body begin to relax, while his skin let in life again, let in air and the sounds of life. He took Rose’s bike out of the trunk and leaned it against the parapet, looking around in spite of himself to see whether Laurence had come back out, and he decided not to go and say goodbye. He was eager now to see his wife and his daughters, to be back in his stable, serene world. Taking the injured child in his car had been a mistake, he knew that, and the thought that it could have gone horribly wrong pierced his guts with a searing pain. Death had been lurking. Once again. He told himself he must pray, that prayer would calm him down.

Sabine and Hélène were lying in their beds, whispering confessions in the dark. Their parents’ room, where Mariette slept, was separated from their own by a plasterboard wall as thin as cardboard. What they were saying was private, because, when they were alone, they dared to speak about there . What was so different about that other family, that uncle and aunt who belonged more to Hélène than to her sisters? What did she have to say about them? What did it mean, exactly, having money ? Woe to the rich. They often heard their parents quote this phrase from the Gospel with a sigh that conveyed discord and envy, and it seemed that being rich was a curse that was full of blessings. Sabine knew that having money meant you were comfortable , that living free of the burden of so many worries meant you became more carefree and relaxed. She was amazed when Hélène described the sort of freedom she was given at the Tavels:

You’ll see, they leave you alone there, Michelle never worries about anything. You go out, you tell her you’re going to see friends, neighbors, you want to walk the dog, and she says fine, see you later.

She doesn’t worry?

Not much.

You go out in Paris all by yourself?

No, not in Paris. I stay in Neuilly. I can’t take the metro by myself.

With me you’ll be able to.

I feel like dancing.

Now?

Hélène got up and began to dance in the middle of the little room, between the beds and the board they used as a desk. Her white nightgown was a moving patch of light from a cloud-trapped moon. Over and over, she said, We’ll take the metro the two of us, the metro underground, and the metro in the sky, the Paris sky, Paris, Paris sky . . .

Get back in bed, Hélène, you’re going to wake Mariette.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her breathing audible, gripped by joy that bubbled like a little splash of water beneath a flame. She was tall and slender for her age, so unlike Sabine in that respect, who was big and earthy, and, at the age of eleven, Hélène was already described as flat as a pancake and beanpole. Her face was pale, her lashes very fine, almost translucent, above her green eyes; her own impression was that she must be as drab as a faded drawing. Above all she couldn’t figure out who she took after. Agnès told her she looked like one of her great-aunts, but since she’d never seen her, she didn’t know whether this was a compliment or a reproach. It was above all terribly old.

It must be nice to take the metro above ground, said Sabine.

I already have, with Vincent.

Is he nice, Vincent?

He’s my favorite cousin. You know, when the metro is above the water, it’s like on a bridge, and sometimes I get scared it will fall . . . of course it never does.

Do you go to the theater very often?

All the time.

Don’t tell me.

Why not?

Because. Don’t tell me. I can imagine it all.

So, what can I tell you?

Dunno.

My pony has phantom pregnancies.

Ah.

But it’s not like she’s a phantom. Are you listening?

Yes, but get in bed, don’t stay with your bare feet on the tile floor, you’ll catch cold.

"What is a phantom pregnancy?"

It’s when you think you’re expecting a baby but you’re not, it’s like a ghost in your belly.

Like when I feel like I have to wee, but in fact it’s my imagination?

Yes.

How do you find out?

Because you never give birth.

But how do other people know? The ones who say she’s having a phantom pregnancy?

Oh, hush now Hélène, you’re wearing me out. Are you crying?

No, I have a cold.

No, you don’t!

I’m crying for my pony.

That’s ridiculous, she’s not crying.

How do you know?

She’s an animal. Animals are like babies, they don’t feel pain.

Why not?

They just don’t. It’s scientific, I suppose.

Ah . . . that’s strange.

No stranger than a phantom pregnancy. Come on, go to sleep now.

There was a moment of silence, where each sister thought about what had just been said, and imagination mingled with ignorance, so much ignorance that it seemed that being an adult must be another state altogether, where nothing remained of what they once were, a molting that would release their former skin in silence and oblivion, and they would go on living like that, suddenly aware of everything, knowing the codes, the laws, making important decisions without hesitating, meeting other people, other informed adults with whom they would share this world that greeted their flawless participation. They felt fragile in their cotton nightgowns, their single beds, the thin walls of these apartments piled one on top of the other, where you could hear the neighbors switching on the light, the dogs’ claws clacking on the tiled floors, the plumbing, the toilet flushing, as well as the rhythm of beds shaking with bodies, women crying out and men crying out, the violence and shame of something they knew nothing about. Night-time was the place of this exposed intimacy, but, in the morning, people met in the stairwell and greeted one another politely, as if nothing had happened, as if the people who lived during the night had stayed in their rooms, and those who showed their faces in broad daylight were their tidy, civilized doubles.

Hélène was crying softly, refraining from blowing her nose, noiselessly letting the snot flow through her fingers. Baloo could feel pain. She knew she could. In the morning, when Hélène went to get her in her box stall or out on the meadow, the pony would whinny when she saw her coming, and then she rubbed her head for a long time against Hélène’s belly. This was joy. Hélène imagined that if she walked past her stall without going in, the opposite thing would happen. It would be pain. Scientific. She didn’t know that word. Gradually, she stopped crying, saw her pony’s huge belly, anyone would think it was full of babies, but in fact it was nothing but guts, flowers, grass, and brambles. And then she fell asleep, after lying in wait, like every night, for the moment she would slip from waking to sleep, but she missed it, she slid without transition from emotion to oblivion. Sabine knew exactly when her little sister dozed off, she pinpointed from her breathing the moment she’d stop asking questions and stop pretending to have a cold. Sabine resumed her Parisian reverie. The faraway city was her second address, her evening rendezvous. And she didn’t just want to be in the metro above the river, she didn’t just want to be sitting in a red velvet armchair. She wanted to walk through Paris alone, without a sister, an aunt, a cousin, or a dog. She wanted to get up and be on her way.

And then, in Aix-en-Provence there was that flurry of public condemnation, over some scandal. For a little provincial town, reclusive and bourgeois, it was a stain that was impossible to hide.

One evening, while her sisters were still playing outside the building and she’d gone back up to do her homework, Sabine heard her parents in the kitchen. They were whispering, agitated. Agnès was holding her face in her hands, she seemed tired and vaguely disorientated.

Why are you crying? Bruno asked.

I’m not crying . . . I’m just upset, that’s all . . .

You wept already when she died . . .

I told you, I’m not crying! It’s just that it . . . I’m disgusted by the fact they’re daring to show it in Aix, when the boy’s parents live right nearby. Aren’t you?

It was as if they both wanted to stop something, ward off some danger, and they couldn’t.

Bruno, that poster, here, it’s shocking. It’s a scandal, yes, that’s what it is, it’s—

Sabine, sweetheart, what are you doing here?

Even though he tried to make his question sound only faintly surprised, Bruno’s voice was trembling, and Sabine had come into the kitchen on tip toe, out of respect for the awkward atmosphere.

Why aren’t you downstairs with your sisters? Who’s looking after Mariette?

Hélène.

Have you been here long?

Yes, ages.

And so, they had to explain. Since she wanted to know. Since she asked, What’s the scandal? And the question made both of them so awkward that for a moment she thought one of them must be involved in some way. They didn’t know how to go about it and kept trying to get the other to speak: Go ahead, you tell her, No, you, go ahead, and she could see how young they were. They’re going to live a long time still, and this thought seemed to suggest that they would live forever, and so she was merciless and demanded that they hide nothing from her, otherwise she’d find out on her own, and that did the trick: neither one of them wanted the matter to be divulged to their daughter with words they hadn’t chosen, or without all the care that was necessary. It was as if they were wrapping a hand grenade